Part of the Project

SAM (Symbiotic Autonomous Machine) is an autonomous robot that survives on its own by selling soda. It was created by Marie Caye as well as designer Arvid Jense. Marie Caye explained that the robot is a symbiosis between a machine and bacteria (it uses the bacteria to make the soda and the machine part of SAM takes care of selling the soda to people).

Although not completely autonomous, SAM makes its own decisions when it comes to the recipe of the sodas, prices as well as everything that has to do with its business. SAM even has a Twitter account.

In her #antenna2017 talk she stressed that machines do not have agency in our society and asked if legalising their status could help build a more collaborative relationship between machines like SAM and humans.

We also asked that she recommend a few cool places to hang out should one ever land up in Eindhoven.

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